If you look real close (big version), there is a spider hidden somewhere in this photo.
San Francisco, CA
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On picnic day, my friends saw a bunch of sorority girls selling henna tattoos (Mehndi). We must have waited around in line (in the sun) an hour, and maybe 20 minutes more for them to get tattooed. I don't know what they were using for their dye, but it was most definitely homemade. I could have artfully smeared some mud on their arms in about 5 minutes. Same net result. At least they had fun!
Davis, CA
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I have another LaTeX entry all typed up, but figured I better keep my postings mildly entertaining so people don't give up on me. You probably have never noticed this, but every once in a while you will walk over little bits of glass (often purple in color) embedded in a sidewalk of a big city. I've seen this in San Francisco and Seattle. This picture is taken standing in an underground tunnel underneath the sidewalk, looking up. The plants are growing out of the sidewalk and UNDER the sidewalk...
Under a Sidewalk somewhere in Seattle, WA
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Over the past couple of weeks I've started putting together my thesis. I have various things I've written throughout my graduate career (journal articles, presentations, posters, etc) that will be included, so I need not write everything from scratch. I'd estimate about 1/3 of it is already written.
I decided that I was going to use LaTeX to format my thesis. Not many chemistry people use LaTeX - they seem to be entrenched in Microsoft land using Word. Support in LaTeX for chemistry is there, though it may take some work to get everything just right.
There are two areas I had particular trouble with: figures and citations. I'll describe how I resolved these issues.
I wanted crisp, clean figures for my thesis. More than half of the figures I see in presentations and papers are ugly, rasterized, blurry or jagged. Pretty figures means I need to preserve the vector data, rather than pixel data.
Using Ball & Stick to generate 3D structures from PDB files is great. Copying and pasting into ChemDraw allows me to add arrows, bond distances, angles, and so forth and also preserves vector data for the ball and stick drawing.
I can then copy and paste this figure to Adobe Illustrator and save it as an *.eps file without further modification. Be sure to set Preview: Format to "None" when prompted with an EPS Options box. ChemDraw will save your figure as an *.eps file, but for whatever reason this is file can't be opened or converted by anything I've tried (and I tried a lot).
I want to output my LaTeX as a *.pdf document, so I can't use the *.eps images directly. There are two utilities for Macs that I've found can convert an *.eps file to a *.pdf file (the required format for vector images). epstopdf produced an image with poor preservation of color. All my grayscale items turned to black. I went with the Mac native utility pstopdf, which produces brilliant results.
In order to add "chemistry style" references (yea, us chemists apparently vary from the rest of the world when it comes to citations) I used the package achemso.
The default behavior for LaTeX is to stick all your references in one place. A good practice, but for a thesis I needed a separate list of references at the end of every chapter. The package chapterbib takes care of this.
Unfortunately, I spent a good two days attempting to get these two packages to play nice together. Ultimately I emailed one of the authors, and current maintainer of achemso, Joseph Wright, mentioning the incompatibility. He had a workaround to me in less than a half hour, followed by a patched version of the package not even ten minutes later. Thank you Joseph!
The hack involved saving the original \bibliographystyle before loading the package, and restoring it after:
\documentclass{...
\let\orgbibliographystyle\bibliographystyle % add this line
\usepackage{achemso,chapterbib}
...
\begin{document}
\let\bibliographystyle\orgbibliographystyle % and this line
...
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There are a few shows from my childhood that stuck with me into adulthood. Chief among them is Mister Rogers' Neighborhood. Not only did Fred Rogers host nearly 1000 episodes of the show, he composed all the music for them, did all the puppet work, and championed congressional funding for PBS programming. One of the most inspiring youtube videos I've seen is Mr. Rogers testifying at a congressional subcommittee, explaining to all the staunch politicians how important it is that he get his message out to children. (video below)
Mister Rogers rocks, need I say more? If Mister Rogers were still around today, March 20th, 2008 would be his 80th birthday. The nonprofit company started by Rogers back in the early 70s is asking that people take this day to remember Rogers. All you need to do is bust out your favorite sweater. I already have my knit zip up sweater picked out, and I'm looking forward to wearing it on March 20th! (video below)
And yea, I'll be sending my self portrait to them.
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Here is another HDR shot, this time taken from the outdoor viewing area on the space needle, looking toward downtown. I was a little annoyed that most of my EXIF data went away after I saved a photo using photomatix, so I started to play around with ExifTool to copy over the original EXIF data from the raw files. It couldn't be easier!
$ exiftool -tagsfromfile IMG_xxxx.CR2 IMG_xxxx_tonemapped.jpgIn this case, the HDR is constructed from three shots, +/- 2 EV from the center, metered one. EXIF data for this center photo has been copied to the final HDR jpg.
Downtown, Seattle, WA
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I'd like to think is my best attempt at an HDR picture yet. My someone special took me on a trip to Seattle this weekend for my birthday. The weather was fantastic, and as you can see in this shot, it was actually sunny! I had a great time.
Space Needle, Seattle, WA
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Yesterday I sat outside in the cold rain waiting for a hundred plus guys in spandex to speed by on their bikes. I positioned myself at the last corner before the sprint finish, hoping everyone would be going crazy trying to get to the front of the pack and get the sprint points. If they were, they rode past too quickly for me to see.
Downtown Davis, CA
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A break in the rain on Saturday let me outside to snap a few photos.
Arboretum at UC Davis, Davis, CA
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With so many things being built it was surprising to see one being torn down. The full version is more impressive.
Deira, Dubai, UAE
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Not sure what this is. It was in a different location each day, but I can't say I ever saw it moving. I'm guessing it pounded big things into the ground?
Bur Dubai, Dubai, UAE
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It looks like the sun is gigantic here, but it is just a perfect little sphere of over-saturation. I enjoy the synchronicity of the sun setting behind the dune, while the SUV is sliding down the other side.
Dubai, UAE
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Yes, I am sitting on a camel - preparing for the shortest camel ride ever. The trainer took us around in a circle and sat the camels back down. It lasted no more than 5 seconds total. After getting off the camel he looks at me and says, "tip, tip, tip". Uhg.
Dubai, UAE
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